New edition - the Top 10
SSD Companies
Editor:- January 7, 2010 - StorageSearch.com today published
the 11 quarterly edition of the
top 10 SSD oems -
ranked by search volume in the 4th quarter of 2009.
This is always
one of the most popular articles on our site.
I know that many SSD
companies themselves are nervous and eager to see how they've fared in this
important list which predicts future winners in the market based on the world's
leading SSD focus group. I've tried to be more direct with my own analytical
comments too - even if it means repeating some things I've already said in other
places - because I know that most of you don't have the time to read
hundreds of SSD articles. ...read the article
Samsung invests in Fusion-io
Editor:- October 20,
2009 - Samsung
has invested in
Fusion-io .
These
2 leading SSD companies
have also agreed to jointly evaluate technology for new SSD applications.
Samsung's
strategic financial investment will drive further solid-state innovation at
Fusion-io, which is expected to result in a steady evolution of state-of-the-art
storage media.
"In securing these agreements, Samsung is furthering its
working relationship with Fusion-io," said Jim Elliott, VP, Memory
Marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. "We continue to be impressed with
the technology Fusion-io is creating and are now taking our relationship with
them to a new level."
"Samsung's superior quality, product consistency and close
working partnership have been important contributors to our success to date,"
said David Flynn, president and CTO of Fusion-io. "We are honored by
Samsung's recognition of our potential and are gratified that these agreements
will ensure that our products use the best NAND flash on the market today."
Editor's comments:- not all
flash memory is created
equal - and an important part of the competitive advantage in an
SSD controller is the
brainpower which the SSD designer has invested into understanding the
personalities of the flash he/she is using. These supplier specific
personalities arise from architecture and process differences in flash memory
and they yield unique distributions of parameters which are often not
explicitly specified in the datasheet. But a good SSD designer can use this
proprietary knowledge to design an SSD which is more economic, or faster, or
more reliable than using generic assumptions.
But those technology
insights can only succeed in the market if the SSD vendor can ensure that they
will get a continuous supply of raw memory products tweaked or batch tested to
fit their controller model. Why should the memory maker restrict their freedom
to innovate their products for the whole market - compared to guaranteeing
features for a single customer?
To make this work the collaborators
have to share confidential technology and market information. That's how this
type of investment agreement starts.
3 years ago
Samsung invested in
SiliconSystems - the background to that was a market in which SLC flash
was expected to be in short supply. Today's investment in Fusion-io has a
different market background - but it demonstrates the 2 companies think they can
do better by working together. Fusion-io said it will be demonstrating new
products based on this collaboration next month.
Dedupe Makes SSD Affordable - says WhipTail's CTO
Editor:-
October 12, 2009 -
WhipTail Technologies
became the 1st SSD appliance company to market integrated in-line
deduplication.
At
SNW WhipTail
announced
it will ship its newly renamed Racerunner (6TB) NAS SSDs with
Exar's Hifn
BitWackr
deduplication and compression solution in Q4 2009. Racerunner has demonstrated
deduplication performance in excess of 1Gbps.
James Candelaria, CTO of
WhipTail Technologies said "Once again, we're proving
Tier 0 storage
doesn't have to be expensive. By providing in-line de-duplication, customers can
save money by investing only in the storage they need."
Editor's
comments:- WhipTail also announced this week that the company has opened a
U.K. office in Surrey.
Data Integrity Challenges in flash SSD Design
Editor:-
October 12, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new article called -
Data Integrity
Challenges in flash SSD Design - written by Kent Smith Senior
Director, Product Marketing, SandForce.
Since
bursting onto the SSD scene
in April 2009,
SandForce has achieved remarkably
high reader popularity.
How did a company whose business is designing
SSD controllers
achieve this? - especially when the direct market for its products today
numbers less than 1,000 oems.
The answer is - that if you want to know
what the future of 2.5"
enterprise SATA SSDs might look like -you have to look at the
leading technology cores that will affect this market. Even if you're not
planning to use SandForce based products yourself - you can't afford to ignore
them - because they are setting the agenda in this market.
Reliability is the
next new thing
for SSD designers and users to start worrying about. A common theme you will
hear from all fast SSD
companies is that the faster you make an SSD go - the more effort you
have to put into understanding and engineering data integrity to eliminate the
risk of "silent errors." ...read the article
Why Consumers Can Expect More Flaky Flash SSDs!
Editor:-
August 10, 2009 - a new article published today on the home page of StorageSearch.com explains why the
consumer flash SSD quality problem is not going to get better any time soon.
You know what I mean. Product recalls, firmware upgrades,
performance downgrades and bad behavior which users did not anticipate from
reading glowing magazine product reviews. And that's if they can get hold of
the new products in the first place.
We predicted this unreliability
scenario many years ago. And you have to get used to it. The new article
explains why it's happening and gives some suggested workarounds for navigating
in a world of imperfect flash SSD product marketing. ...read the article
Introducing - Fat, Regular, Skinny SSDs
Editor:-
July 28, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
today published an article -
RAM Cache Ratios
in flash SSDs - which proposes new terms to describe and differentiate
products in the flash SSD market.
It is hoped that the new
classification jargon will be useful to users who have to evaluate lots of
products, and will be useful to vendors as a shorthand when communicating
about different segments within their flash SSD product lines.
Within the 2.5" SSD
market - for example - the
fastest products
confusingly include models in all 3 of the new categories.
The new
article explains why it's important to know the underlying RAM cache
architecture - even if you're happy with the R/W and IOPS performance. ...read the article
New Disk Backup Article from BakBone
Editor:- July
14, 2009 - a new article is published today on StorageSearch.com called -
"Aspects of
Disk Backup".
Written by Andrew Brewerton -
Technical Director (Europe) - BakBone Software - the
new article comprehensively reviews the why? how? and where?
of today's modern enterprise disk backup techniques.
StorageSearch.com has had a decade
long affinity with enterprise
disk backup - tracking changes in the market since the concept 1st began.
This overview article brings that coverage right up to date - from the
perspective of a leading company in the
backup software market.
...read the
article |
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| flash SSD
Jargon Explained |
typical news flash:- March
2, 2009 - Fast symmetric R/W IOPS high endurance, MLC SSD, with 3 levels of
wear-leveling, massive over-provisioning, write attenuation and fast garbage
collection provides competitive alternative to RAM SSDs.
Do you
understand the list of ingredients in all the solid state drive headlines?
Understanding
what goes on inside flash SSDs - can be as important as knowing what you can
do with them. See the new article
flash SSD Jargon
Explained. | |
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| Need SSD
Acceleration ASAP? - new article on SSD ASAPs |
| Editor:- December 28, 2009 -
StorageSearch.com recently
published a new article which discusses
the pros and cons of
using SSD ASAPs - Auto-tuning SSD Accelerated Pools of storage. |
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How can server users easily
decide if they should ignore these products - or spend more time looking at
them? It's going to be a huge market. ...read the article | | |
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| Can You Trust Your Flash
SSD's Specs? |
Editor:- I've noticed is that
the published specs of
flash SSDs change
a lot -from the time a product they are first announced, then when they're
being sampled, and later again when they are in volume production.
Sometimes
the headline numbers get better, sometimes they get worse. There are many good
reasons for this.
The product which you carefully qualified may
not be identical to the one that's going into your production line for a
variety of reasons... ...read the article | |
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the Fastest Solid State
Disks
Speed isn't everything, and it comes at a price. |
But if
you do need the6speediest
SSD then wading through the web sites of over 140 current
SSD oems to find a suitable
candidate slows you down.
And the SSD search problem will get even
worse. |
 | |
I
predict there will be over 100 SSD oems in 2008.
I've done the
research for you to save you time. And this page is updated daily from
storage news and direct
inputs from oems. ...read
the article, | |
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| Z's Laws - Predicting
Future Flash SSD Performance |
A reader asked me a
very good question.
"Is there an industry roadmap for future
flash SSD
performance?"
That prompted other questions like...
- How fast are flash SSDs going to be in 2009?, 2010? or 2012?
- What are the technology factors which relate to flash SSD throughput and
IOPS?
- How close will flash SSDs get to
RAM SSD performance?
There wasn't a simple answer I could give at the time. Clues lay
scattered all across this web site
and in my many one on one discussions with readers about the market... |
 |
But I agreed there should be
a single place on the web where these answers could be found.
Forget
Moore's
Law. That gives you the wrong answer, and this article explains why. ...read the article | | |
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